One  Hundredth  Anniversary  of 
the  Birth  of  Horace  Greeley 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


,x-> 

race  oree 
Centenary 

Typographical  Union  No.  6 


One  Hundredth  Anniversary 


of  the  Birth  of 


Horace  Greeley 


First  President  of 
V  .       Typographical  Union  No.  6 


New  York  Theatre 

February  5,  1911 


Under  the  Auspices  of  "Big  6 


HORACE  GREELEY 

A  rare  photograph  of  Mr.  Greeley,  taken  in  1850,  while  president  of  the 
New  York  Printers'  Union. 


"?,     0- 

*--•  -4  r 


The  Formation  of  Typographical  Union  No.  6 

By  GEORGE  A.  STEVENS 

At  the  close  of  1849  the  New  York  Printers'  Union  (which  became  Typo- 
graphical Union  No.  6  when  the  National  Typographical  Union  was  founded 
in  1852)  was  in  a  formative  state.  It  had  adopted  a  constitution,  and  under 
the  provisions  of  that  fundamental  law  the  first  regular  session  of  the  union 
convened  at  Stoneall's  Hotel,  131  Fulton  Street,  on  Saturday  evening,  Janu- 
ary 19,  1850.  The  important  business  of  that  meeting  was  the  election  of 
officers  for  the  succeeding  yearly  term. 

Horace  Greeley  had  been  invited  to  accept  the  Presidency  of  the  young 
organization,  and  he  had  cheerfully  consented  to  serve  in  that  capacity. 
He  was  therefore  chosen  unanimously,  as  were  also  these  other  officers: 
Vice-President,  Edgar  H.  Rogers;  Recording  Secretary,  "William  H.  Prindle; 
Financial  Secretary,  R.  Cunnington;  Corresponding  Secretary,  George 
Johnson;  Treasurer,  Thomas  N.  Rooker. 

It  was  quite  natural  for  the  organized  printers  to  select  Horace  Greeley 

as  their  first  presiding  officer,  because  he  already  had  been  prominently 

>—    identified  with  workingmen's  movements  in  a  number  of  trades  to  better 

00    their  social  and  economic  condition.    He  favored  united  action  on  their  part. 

oc    Not  alone  in  the  editorial  columns  of  the  Tribune  did  he  urge  that  only 

°5    through    associated  effort  could    they  succeed  in  establishing  wages  at  a 

~     standard  that  would  permit  them  to  preserve  their  homes  and  enjoy  the 

comforts  to  which  they  and  their  families  were  entitled,  but  from  the  ros- 

"•     trum  he  eloquently  espoused  their  cause,  appealing  to  the  public  conscience 

w     to  aid  in  the  crusade  for  shorter  working  time,  improved  shop  conditions, 

and  the  correction  of  abuses  that  had  crept  insidiously  into  industrial  life 

and  sapped  the  strength  of  those  who  toiled.     Especially  solicitous  was  he 

.     for  the  welfare  of  his  own  craftsmen,  and  he  impressed  upon  them  the  neces- 

o    sity  of  co-operating  with  him  in  an  effort  to  place  the  printing  business  on 

^     a  broader  plane,  so  that  both  the  workers  and  the  employers  could  derive  a 

jg     just  remuneration  for  their  work. 

w  When  the  draft  of  the  first  scale  of  prices  of  the  Printers'  Union  was 

H  presented  for  consideration,  President  Greeley  gave  expression  to  these  ideas 
<  on  the  subject  in  the  Tribune  of  September  3,  1850:  "There  ought  obvi- 
ously to  be  some  uniform  standard  or  scale  to  be  appealed  to  in  case  of  dif- 
ference as  to  the  proper  compensation  for  any  work  done.  Anarchy, 
uncertainty  and  chaos  on  this  subject  are  all  against  the  fair,  regular,  live- 
and-let-live  employer,  who  wants  good  work  done  by  good  workmen,  and  is 
willing  to  pay  for  it :  and  benefit  only  the  niggard  who  calculates  to  enrich 
himself  by  grinding  the  face  of  the  poor  and  robbing  labor  of  its  honest  due. 


461464 


All  we  ask  is  a  reasonable  and  explicit  scale  of  prices,  agreed  to  by  employers 
and  journeymen,  and  binding  until  both  parties  consent  to  a  change.  Such 
a  one  may  now  be  had  if  the  honorable  and  fair-dealing  employers  will  con- 
fer with  the  journeymen  in  establishing  it."  In  the  following  November 
the  Printers'  Union  held  a  mass  meeting,  at  which  there  was  a  thorough 
discussion  of  the  proposed  scale.  Mr.  Greeley  attended  and  made  a  vigorous 
speech  in  favor  of  the  proposition  for  uniform  wages.  He  declared  that  the 
matter  ought  to  be  brought  to  a  decision,  and  if  the  journeymen  failed  to 
enforce  their  rates  they  should  establish  a  model  printing  office  to  print 
books,  pamphlets,  newspapers',  and  all  sorts  of  publications,  and  work  for 
themselves  as  a  co-operative  society.  They  had  met  for  work,  he  said,  and 
not  for  talk,  and  he  hoped  they  would  do  something  effectual  before  they 
separated,  as  it  was  high  time  to  bring  the  existing  system  to  an  end.  The 
scale  was  finally  adopted  and  went  into  effect  in  February,  1851,  at  which 
time  Mr.  Greeley  printed  a  strong  editorial  in  its  favor,  and  it  was  accepted 
by  the  great  majority  of  the  employing  printers. 

President  Greeley  served  the  union  faithfully  and  well  throughout  his 
term,  and  he  also  represented  the  organization  in  the  Congress  of  Trades, 
the  central  association  of  workingmen  that  was  organized  in  this  city  in 
1850.  He  retired  from  office  on  January  4,  1851.  His  official  call  for  the 
meeting  that  was  held  on  that  date  contained  this  announcement:  "The 
First  Annual  Ball  of  the  Union  comes  off  at  Tripler  Hall  Tuesday  evening, 
January  7,  1851." 


PROGRAMME 


OVERTURE 


Prof.  Max  Schmidt  and  Orchestra 


TYPOGRAPHICAL  UNION  No.  6 


President  James  Tole 


VIOLIN  SELECTION— a)  "Meditation"  (Thais) 
b)  "Adoration" 

Miss  Marie  Deutscher 
Accompanist,  Mr.  Herbert  Braham 


Massenet 
Borowski 


"HORACE  GREELEY  AND  THE  CAUSE  OF  LABOR" 
Senator  Albert  J.  Beveridge,  of  Indiana 

ORCHESTRA  SELECTIONS 

"HORACE  GREELEY,  THE  JOURNALIST" 

Mr.  William  H.  McElroy,  former  Editor  of  the  New  York  Tribune 


SOPRANO  SOLO,  "The  Lark" 

Mme.  Alma  Webster  Powell 
Accompanist,  Mr.  A.  Judson  Powell 


-     Bishop 


ORCHESTRA  SELECTIONS 


'HORACE  GREELEY,  THE  MAN" 

Mr.  Andrew  McLean,  Editor  of  the  Brooklyn  Citizen 


ii  i*  U     rtij.  That 
was  admitted  a  Member  of  Ihe   Neu»*¥ftrh    printers'    2Bttion, 


A  Reproduction  of  Card  No.  1,  Issued  by  Horace  Greeley 


cAddress  of  the  Chairman 

JAMES  TOLE 
President  of  Typographical  Union  No.  6 

It  is  fitting  that  Typographical  Union  No.  6  should  today  bring  to  a 
close  the  three-days'  series  of  celebrations  of  the  birth  of  Horace  Greeley— 
its  first  president.  Greeley  was  noted  for  many  things,  but  we  wish  to 
remember  him  as  Horace  Greeley  the  printer !  What  emotions  are  stirred 
by  the  mere  utterance  of  those  simple  words!  From  1850  to  1911,  in  the 
counting  of  time,  is  but  the  passing  of  a  shadow.  Yet  in  the  fleeting  of 
years  nations  and  peoples  have  run  the  gamut  of  change ;  heroes  have  dis- 
ported their  laurel  wreaths  and  passed  away ;  statesmen  and  great  men  in 
all  lines  of  endeavor  have  enjoyed  the  sweets  of  their  greatness,  and  have 
then  stepped  from  the  gaze  of  the  moment.  But  we  have  been  endowed 
with  the  blessed  faculty  of  memory — that  memory  which  at  bidding  con- 
jures to  the  mind  the  glories  of  the  past  and  maintains  our  veneration  of 
those  to  whose  examples  we  owe  so  much. 

It  is,  therefore,  with  iriore  than  pride  and  gratitude  that  we  of  the 
printing  craft  speak  and  think  of  Horace  Greeley  as  a  printer.  Should 
we  not  be  proud,  indeed,  to  remember  that  in  the  hour  of  his  greatest 
triumphs  he,  too,  was  proud  that  he  was  a  printer? 

And  how  grateful  are  we  that  the  first  line  written  in  the  glorious  his- 
tory of  our  organization  emanated  from  so  great  a  mind.  For  on  January 
1,  1850 — sixty-one  years  ago — the  New  York  Printers'  Union  was  organ- 
ized, and  Greeley  was  its  first  president. 

The  inspiring  figure  of  Horace  Greeley  has  surely  spurred  on  to  ambi- 
tious heights  many  of  our  craftsmen  who  followed  him,  and  who  themselves 
have  attained  to  high  honors  in  the  land.  Notable  names  might  be  men- 
tioned to  those  who,  like  the  subject  of  the  day,  left  the  printers'  case  to 
take  their  places  in  the  highest  intelligence  of  the  day. 

The  printers'  trade  has  been  described  as  "the  art  preservative."  It 
is  more — it  is  the  avenue  through  which  was  approached  the  wonderful 
career  of  this  immortal  American,  whose  impress  upon  the  social  and  politi- 
cal history  of  our  country  is  written  in  lines  of  grateful  remembrance.  It 
may  be  that  when  the  present  fades  away  in  the  shadows  of  the  past— 
when  the  children  of  the  future  shall  have  become  the  moulders  of  the 
nation's  destiny,  when  the  press  of  new  and  strange  things  fills  the  public 
mind — it  may  be  that  the  world  at  large  will  but  hazily  think  of  the  com- 
manding intellect  of  the  printer  in  honor  of  whose  memory  we  are  now 
assembled. 

But  the  "art  preservative  of  all  arts"— the  art  of  which  he  was  so 


ardent  a  disciple— keeps  forever  the  indelible  record  of  his  life,  forever 
furnishing  deepest  inspiration,  encouraging  ambition  to  great  achievements. 

No  grander  character  springs  from  history's  pages  than  this  man,  who, 
first  perceiving  the  need  of  reforms  in  trade  conditions  then  existing  was 
the  first  to  set  about  effecting  those  reforms.  No  union  printer  of  the 
present  day  can  fail  to  appreciate  the  efforts  of  this  pioneer  to  establish 
the  craft  upon  a  basis  deserving  the  respect  of  the  community.  Who  shall 
say  that  the  widespreading  influence  and  power  of  the  International  Typo- 
graphical Union  are  not  due  to  the  energies  of  those  who  laid  our  founda- 
tions more  than  half  a  century  ago? 

The  man  who  begun  by  putting  into  type  the  thoughts  of  others,  who 
later  aspired  even  to  the  highest  honor  within  the  gift  of  his  countrymen 
—  was  a  printer.  Never  forgetting  his  early  training  and  associations  in  a 
printing  office,  it  is  a  matter  of  record  that  among  his  most  active  work  in 
New  York  City  was  that  in  the  direction  of  elevating  his  chosen  craft,  and 
the  success  of  his  labors  is  now  evidenced  in  the  position  of  influence  of  the 
present  union  of  7.000  members,  of  which  he  was  the  first  president — a 
union  then  of  27  members. 

Since  the  stirring  days  of  his  activities  in  our  ranks  others  have  ap- 
peared and  performed  their  alloted  duties  among  men;  men  and  times  and 
conditions  have  changed;  adversities  have  been  met  and  conquered;  we 
have  been  torn  by  strife  and  at  times  have  been  forced  almost  to  the  last 
issue  in  order  to  maintain  our  integrity.  But  throughout  it  all— even  in  the 
darkest  hour,  when  hope  was  ebbing  low — there  was  always  before  us  the 
indomitable  spirit  of  the  man  who  set  our  ship  afloat,  the  man  who  knew 
how  to  battle  for  right,  whose  fearlessness  and  determination  are  today  the 
pride  and  glory  of  every  American  union  printer. 

Fitting  it  is,  then,  that  on  this  day,  in  various  parts  of  the  country, 
assemblages  such  as  this  one  have  gathered  together  to  pay  tribute  to  the 
memory  of  this  great  American.  Men  of  the  journalist  profession  are 
today  extolling  the  qualities  of  the  genius  whose  magic  has  widened  the 
scope  of  their  endeavors,  and  whose  name  is  linked  forever  with  the  highest 
and  purest  ideals.  They  will  speak  reverently  of  him  not  only  as  the  lead- 
ing editor  of  his  time,  as  the  greatest  power  in  journalism  of  his  day,  but 
also  as  an  astute  statesman,  a  true  and  keen  observer  of  the  trend  of  events. 

Journalist,  statesman,  thinker,  reformer,  man  of  affairs  he  was,  leaving 
behind  him  the  ineffaceable  record  of  his  greatness!  But  our  fondest 
thought  of  him  is  of  the  man  in  all  his  simple  earnestness,  the  worker  in  the 
ranks  of  his  fellow  men,  ever  striving  for  the  general  uplift  of  mankind 
and  thinking  of  himself  merely  as  Horace  Greeley— the  printer. 


10 


cylddress  by  Hon.  A.  J.  Beveridge 

"Horace  Greeley  and  the  Cause  of  Labor" 

The  labor  problem  is  the  fundamental  problem.  Believing1  this.  Horace 
Greeley  was,  in  his  time,  the  prophet  of  a  brighter  day  for  thcxse  who  toil. 
The  great  journal  which  he  founded  became,  in  a  critical  period,  the  trum- 
pet of  American  conscience;  yet  even  above  his  fame  as  one  of  the  most 
brilliant  journalists  the  world  has  produced  stands  his  renown  as  a  cham- 
pion of  the  rights  of  labor. 

The  welfare  of  men,  women,  and  children  who  must  eat  their  bread  in 
the  sweat  of  their  faces  was  his  deepest  concern.  Wise  counsellor  of  the 
toiling  masses,  he  also  was  a  fearless  fighter  to  better  their  conditions.  What 
Horace  Greeley  believed  in,  that  he  fought  for. 

Even  in  his  early  manhood  Horace  Greeley  saw  that  simple  and  sublime 
truth  that  the  laborer  is  not  merely  a  commodity,  but  a  human  being,  and 
therefore  that  every  phase  of  the  labor  problem  can  be  solved  only  from 
this  Christian  viewpoint. 

The  old  and  savage  theory  that  the  workingman  is  merely  merchandise 
like  a  sack  of  flour  or  a  bucket  of  coal  or  a  threshing  machine;  that  the 
life  energies  of  man,  woman  and  child  should  be  bought  in  a  labor  market 
at  the  lowest  price  which  the  competition  of  hunger  made  possible;  that 
the  employer  need  not  think  of  the  employee  as  a  human  being  but  only  as 
a  working  animal  to  be  used  until  exhausted  and  then  cast  aside— that  idea 
i,s  the  child  of  brutal  barbarism. 

It  came  down  to  us  from  the  hideous  past.  It  has  built  more  hovels  and 
prevented  the  building  of  more  homes ;  placed  more  broken  human  beings 
in  their  graves  and  filled  the  abiding  places  of  mankind  with  more  misery 
and  woe  than  all  the  wars  that  have  cursed  the  world.  This  apparently  is 
extreme ;  yet  it  is  but  a  carefully  guarded  statement  of  facts  established  by 
history  and  statistics. 

To  Horace  Greeley  this  idea  of  human  labor  was  horrible.  It  would  be 
better  for  the  Nation  and  all  the  world  if  the  master  minds  directing  the 
material  forces  of  our  time  could  see  this  as  Horace  Greeley  saw  it. 

It  would  be  better  if  the  principle  of  brotherhood  should  enter  into  all 
our  industry  and  commerce,  making  human  the  harsh  principle  of  commer- 
cialism— the  principle  of  profit  at  any  cost,  of  gain  at  any  sacrifice,  even 
the  sacrifice  of  human  happiness  and  life. 

And,  indeed,  more  and  more  is  this  transpiring. 

More  and  more  the  principle  of  brotherhood  is  making  its  conquest  of 
our  industrial  and  commercial  life. 

11 


More  and  more  the  idea  that  the  laborer  is  a  human  being  serving  his 
employer  in  fellowship  for  their  mutual  welfare  is  overcoming  the  idea  that 
the  workingman  is  a  mere  tool,  a  senseless  mechanism  to  be  used  only  for 
his  employer's  profit  until  his  industrial  effectiveness  is  gone  and  then 
thrown  helpless,  hopeless  and  ruined  into  the  great  human  scrapheap  like 
a  wrecked  machine  or  ashes  of  burned-out  fuel. 

For  the  present  progress  and  final  triumph  of  the  idea  of  the  laborer  as 
a  huinan  being  as  much  if  not  more  credit  is  due  Hiorace  Greeley  than  to 
any  other  single  American  intellect.  His  declaration  that  "Man  was  not 
made  merely  to  eat,  work  and  sleep"  went  to  the  hearts  of  his  countrymen 
when  he  uttered  it  and  comes  to  us  today  like  the  burning  words  of  the 
Hebrew  prophets. 

His  battlecry  was  "A  place  for  every  man  and  a  man  for  every  place." 
He  declared  that  "Dives  might  perhaps  give  Lazarus  a  steady  job  of 
oakum-picking,  or  even  gardening,  in  order  to  keep  the  crumbs  about  his 
table  for  his  dogs  exclusively,  without  at  all  recognizing  the  essential 
brotherhood  between  them  or  doing  anything  to  vindicate  it." 

For  an  hour  I  might  quote  such  utterances  of  Horace  Greeley.  But  he 
did  not  stop  with  these  splendid  generalities.  A\7ith  the  vigor  of  conviction 
he  gave  them  point  and  substance  by  concrete  plans  for  labor's  betterment. 

He  was  among  the  greatest  of  the  advocates  of  organized  labor.  He  saw 
not  only  the  inhumanity  that  the  toiler  suffered  from  want  of  organization ; 
saw  not  only  that  the  disorganization  of  labor  and  the  organization  of  cap- 
ital made  possible  "man's  inhumanity  to  man"  which  "makes  countless 
thousands  mourn,"  but  also  he  saw  that  lack  of  organization  among  labor- 
ers caused  incredible  waste  and  loss. 

It  was  Horace  Greeley  who  declared  that  ' '  The  aggregate  waste  of  labor 
and  faculty  for  want  of  organization  in  any  year  exceeds  the  cost  of  any 
war  for  five  years,  ruinous  and  detestable  as  all  war  is.  It  is  palpable 
fatuity  and  criminal  waste  of  the  divine  bounty  to  let  this  go  on  intermin- 
ably." 

And  so  Horace  Greeley  preached  the  righteousness  and  wisdom  of  the 
organization  of  labor.  He  was  our  great  American  champion  of  the  brother- 
hood of  toil.  Not  even  today  does  any  economist  more  thoroughly  under- 
stand the  philosophy  of  the  organization  of  labor  than  Horace  Greeley 
understood  it  three-quarters  of  a  century  ago.  And  no  man  today  expounds 
with  more  guarded  thoughtfulness  or  brilliant  argument  the  common  sense 
and  beneficence  of  organized  labor  than  did  this  journalistic  tribune  of  the 
people  from  early  manhood  to  the  very  sunset  of  his  life. 

He  thought,  spoke  and  fought  for  improved  labor  conditions  in  every 
phase  of  labor's  activity  and  life.  He  believed  labor  entitled  to  higher 
wages.  Horace  Greeley  thought  that  labor,  which,  jointly  with  capital, 
produces  this  wealth,  should  get  an  increased  and  increasing  share  of  it. 

Even  in  that  day  Greeley  was  shocked  at  the  lightning-like  accumula- 
tion of  riches  in  the  hands  of  a  few  who  did  little  to  earn  them  and  the 

12 


appalling  increase  of  the  thousands  who  asked  only  an  opportunity  to  work 
that  they  might  eat. 

No  clearer  light  ever  has  been  thrown  on  unjustifiable  industrial  and 
financial  inequalities  than  Horace  Greeley's  remorseless  analysis;  few 
stronger  denunciations  of  this  wicked  condition  ever  were  pronounced  since 
the  time  when  the  Divine  Equalizer  gave  to  mankind  his  sacred  message 
two  thousand  years  ago. 

But  in  nearly  all  he  said  and  proposed  for  the  welfare  of  the  working- 
man,  Greeley  was  carefully  practical;  he  did  not  propose  to  cure  between 
morning  and  nightfall  all  the  injustices  we  have  inherited  from  the  begin- 
ning of  time. 

But  there  were  some  things  upon  which  he  did  insist  as  immediately 
necessary  and  not  to  be  compromised.  One  of  these  was  a  shortening  of  the 
laborer's  working  day. 

At  that  time  it  was  both  law  and  usage  to  employ  labor  at  the  lowest 
possible  point  to  which  the  fear  of  starvation  could  drive  wages,  and  then 
compel  the  laborer  to  work  as  many  hours  as  the  employer  chose  without 
consultation  or  consent  of  the  man  who  did  the  work. 

So  laborers  were  compelled  to  work  twelve  and  fourteen  hours,  and  for 
even  longer  periods,  every  working  day.  Greeley  proposed  to  shorten  this 
period  of  toil,  either  by  agreement  or  by  law,  to  a  maximum  of  ten  hours 
a  day.  The  employers  thought  this  meant  their  business  injury — even 
their  bankruptcy.  Greeley  showed  them,  instead,  that  shorter  hours  and 
higher  wages  meant,  the  employers'  increased  prosperity. 

It  was  the  same  conflict  between  a  blind  and  sordid  selfishness  on  the 
one  hand  and  a  wise,  common-sense  and  humanitarianism  on  the  other  hand 
that  occurred  in  England  a  few  years  earlier,  when  Shaftesbury  and  Sad- 
dler and  the  other  British  labor  reformers  began  to  fight  for  the  idea  of  the 
laborer  as  a  human  being.  But  no  English  reformer  ever  put  the  argument 
for  shortening  hours  of  labor  more  compellingly  than  did  the  American 
Greeley. 

Aside  from  the  economic  folly  of  an  unlimited  working  day,  its  crass 
injustice  shocked  Greeley's  honest  soul.  Of  this  stupid  wrong  he  said :  "It 
would  be  as  sensible  and  just  to  prescribe  that  a  pound  of  meat  or  sugar 
or  coffee  should  consist  of  just  as  many  ounces  as  the  buyer  should  see  fit, 
after  the  price  had  been  settled,  to  exact,  or  that  a  bushel  of  grain  should 
consist  of  an  indefinite  number  of  quarts,  as  that  a  day's  work  should  con- 
sist of  ten,  eleven,  twelve  or  thirteen  hours'  faithful  labor,  just  as  the 
purchaser  of  that  labor  should  think  proper  to  require." 

The  fact  that  in  nearly  fifty  trades  there  is  at  the  present  time  an  eight- 
hour  day  by  agreement  between  employers  and  their  organized  employees; 
that  as  a  result  there  is  an  increased  and  better  product,  a  sturdier,  happier 
and  more  enlightened  laboring  class ;  that  there  are  more  homes  and  fewer 
hovels  for  these  laborers,  and  that  those  homes  have  more  books,  music  and 
comforts  than  ever  before,  is  due  to  this  humane  agitation  for  a  shorter 

13 


(lay  of  labor,  of  which  Horace  Greeley  was  one  of  the  first  and  greatest 
American  apostles,  and  to  the  steady,  intelligent  efforts  of  organized  labor, 
of  which  Horace  GreeJey  was  one  of  the  first  and  greatest  American 
champions. 

Child  labor  is  America's  peculiar  industrial  shame.  It  is  a  crime  against 
manhood  labor — every  child  laborer  at  childhood  wages  takes  the  place  of 
a  man  laborer  at  manhood  wages. 

It  is  a  crime  against  the  humane  business  man— his  goods,  made  by  man- 
hood labor  at  manhood  wages,  must  meet  his  competitors'  goods  made  by 
child  labor  at  childhood  wages. 

It  is  a  crime  against  childhood— every  little  one  has  an  inalienable,  a 
sacred,  right  to  grow  into  sound-bodied,  clear-brained,  pure-souled  maturity. 

It  is  a  crime  against  society ;  it  pours  into  our  citizenship  a  stream  of 
people  weakened  in  body  and  mind. 

It  is  an  insult  to  our  religion,  whose  founder  said :  ' '  Suffer  little  chil- 
dren to  come  unto  me,  and  forbid  them  not,  for  of  such  is  the  Kingdom 
of  God." 

Horace  Greeley  was  against  it.  Even  in  his  day,  when  greed  had 
scarcely  begun  to  chain  us  to  this  body  of  death,  he  sought  to  restrain  it. 
It  was  Horace  Greeley  who  declared:  "The  State  has  a  right  to  see  and 
ought  to  see  that  the  frames  of  the  rising  generation  are  not  shattered  nor 
their  constitutions  undermined  by  excessive  toil.  She  should  do  this  for  her 
own  sake  as  well  as  for  Humanity's.  She  has  a  vital  interest  in  the  strength 
and  vigor  of  those  who  are  to  be  her  future  fathers  and  mothers,  her  de- 
fenders in  war,  her  cultivators  and  artisans  in  peace,  *  *  *  For  what- 
ever service  it  may  be  necessary  to  employ  labor  *  *  *  there  will  always 
be  found  an  abundance  of  adults  if  proper  inducements  are  offered." 

Thus  spoke  Horace  Greeley  when  child  labor  in  America  w^as  a  pleasant 
pastime  compared  with  the  black  brutality  of  child  labor  in  America  today. 

What  would  he  say  now  if  he  could  see  the  reeking  sweatshops,  the 
clouded  coal  breakers,  the  thundering  mills  where  scores  of  thousands  of 
little  ones  are  being  sacrificed  to  Mammon  in  the  name  of  a  false  prosperity. 

Here  is  how  he  summed  up  his  unanswerable  arguments  for  a  higher 
estate  for  those  who  toil : 

"A  better  social  condition,  enlarged  opportunities  for  good,  an  atmos- 
phere of  humanity  and  hope,  would  insure  a  nobler  and  truer  character, 
and  that  the  dens  of  dissipation  will  clear  to  leave  those  whom  a  proper 
education  has  qualified  and  whom  excessive  toil  has  not  disqualified  for  the 
improvement  of  liberty  and  leisure. 

"Our  Eden  is  before  us,  not  behind  us,"  said  Horace  Greeley.  And 
that  is  true.  It  is  a  long,  long  march  before  us  and  we  can  reach  it  as  all 
inarching  armies  reach  their  destination,  only  by  a  step  at  a  time. 

There  are  those  who  are  impatient  with  this  slow  progress— they  want 
to  reach  the  end  with  a  single  stride.  Let  us  not  blame  them,  for  hard 
conditions  justify  their  impatience. 

14 


There  are  those  who  resist  any  forward  step  whatever— they  think 
humanity's  advance  means  their  financial  loss.  Let  us  not  blame  them 
either,  but  merely  pity  them  that  the  lust  of  gain  has  blinded  them  to  the 
fellowship  of  man. 

Most  of  the  labor  reforms  which  Greeley  proposed  and  for  which  lie 
fought  already  have  been  realized  in  part  and  ultimately  and  soon  will  be 
realized  entirely. 

The  ten-hour  working  day  for  which  Greeley  battled,  against  the  un- 
limited working  day  of  his  time,  now  has  grown  into  the  eight-hour  day 
from  the  same  arguments  and  facts  which  Greeley  used.  It  ought  to  be 
universal  in  all  trades. 

From  ocean  to  ocean  organized  labor  is  now  a  fact  as  permanent  as  the 
Government  itself. 

The  holy  crusade  against  child  labor  now  moving  militantly  forward 
will  not  cease  until  this  stain  is  wiped  entirely  from  our  flag. 

In  short,  the  day  is  dawning  when  the  evils  that  Greeley  denounced  and 
the  principal  reforms  which  he  proposed  will  be  accomplished,  and  the  mul- 
tiplying millions  who  produce  the  wealth  of  the  land  in  peace  and  carry  its 
muskets  in  war  will  more  largely  enjoy  life,  liberty  and  pursuit  of  happi- 
ness which  is  their  inalienable  right. 

And  when  the  sun  of  that  day  is  fully  above  the  horizon  its  glad  light 
will  reveal  Horace  Greeley  as  the  heroic  figure  of  that  notable  epoch  for 
those  who  toil— Horace  Greeley  at  once  that  epoch's  prophet,  philosopher, 
orator  and  soldier  of  the  common  good. 


15 


HORACE  GREELEY 


c>4.ddress  by  William  H.  McElroy 

"Horace  Greeley  As  a  Journalist" 

On  the  17th  of  August,  1831,  Horace  Greeley,  then  twenty  years  old, 
came  to  New  York  City  looking  for  work.  He  carried  his  entire  fortune- 
upwards  of  ten  dollars — in  his  pocket.  He  knew  nobody,  he  bore  letters 
of  introduction  to  no  citizen,  desirable  or  undesirable.  His  nearest  friend 
was  two  hundred  miles  away.  Nevertheless  the  boy  was  hardly  to  be 
pitied.  For  he  resolutely  declined  to  allow  poverty  to  blight  him.  On  the 
contrary,  he  forced  it  to  bless  him  by  using  it  as  a  spur  to  worthy  endeavor. 
Lacking  visible  friends  the  voice  of  God  in  his  own  soul  must  have  cheered 
him  with  the  assurance  that  he  could  enlist  in  his  service  if  he  chose— and 
young  Horace  Greeley  chose — friends  invisible  but  most  powerful — a  goodly 
company,  composed  of  trustworthiness,  industry,  perseverance,  patience, 
courage. 

The  sister  of  another  prominent  American  told  me  this  story  of  her 
brother.  He  had  risen  from  poverty  and  obscurity  to  riches  and  honor,  had 
become  one  of  the  foremost  men  of  his  country.  One  afternoon  as  she  was 
sitting  with  him  in  his  library  his  son  came  in.  The  son  was  a  gay  young 
man  of  fashion  and  something  of  a  "sport."  He  had  been  out  driving  and 
entered  the  library  jauntily,  carrying  his  whip  in  his  hand.  His  father 
gazed  at  him  a  moment  and  then  said,  with  a  sigh,  ' '  Jack,  do  you  know  that 
I  am  inclined  to  pity  you?"  Jack,— young,  handsome,  without  a  care,  an 
heir  to  a  fortune,  naturally  was  amazed.  "Why  in  the  world  do  you  pity 
me,  father?"  he  asked.  "Well,  my  son,"  his  father  explained,  "I  am 
inclined  to  pity  you  because  you  will  never  have  the  benefit  of  the  disad- 
vantages under  which  I  labored  at  your  age. ' '  Horace  Greeley,  in  the  days 
of  his  youth,  had  the  benefit  of  a  number  of  first-rate  disadvantages. 

In  his  essay  on  Representative  Men,  Mr.  Emerson  writes:  "When 
Nature  removes  a  great  man  people  explore  the  horizon  for  a  successor.  But 
none  comes  and  none  will.  His  class  is  extinguished  with  him."  But  the 
passing  away  of  some  great  men  does  not  seem  the  extinguishment  of  their 
class.  They  go,  but  their  class  survives.  That  is  to  say,  sooner  or  later  they 
are  succeeded  by  men  who  remind  us  of  them,  who  perform  the  sort  of  work 
which  they  performed.  But  it  was  emphatically  true  of  Horace  Greeley 
that  "his  class  perished  with  him";  that  we  shall  not  see  his  like  again. 
He  was  not  only  a  great  man  but  a  great  man  of  a  rare  sort.  He  has  been 
studied  from  many  points  of  view  but  has  not  been  adequately  painted,  for 
his  was  a  personal  equation  of  which  it  may  be  said  what  Daniel  Webster 
said  of  Eloquence:  "Words  and  phrases  may  be  marshalled  in  every  way; 
they  cannot  express  it." 

17 


The  theme  which  has  been  assigned  me,  Horace  Greeley  as  a  Journalist, 
does  not  call  for  a  survey  of  his  career  from  all  points  of  view,  but 
simply  for  a  consideration  of  the  character  and  significance  of  his  work  in 
his  chosen  profession.  Many  circumstances  combined  to  make  him  what 
he  was — the  foremost  journalist  of  his  generation.  He  was  preeminently 
a  manly  man,  a  man  who  did  his  own  thinking  and  not  thinking  which  he 
inherited  or  was  dictated  to  him.  He  was  generously  endowed  with  moral 
energy,  intellectual  resources  and  sympathy,  of  the  affirmative  sort,  for  all 
sorts  and  conditions  of  men,  especially  for  the  poor  and  oppressed.  He 
loved  work  as  ardently  as  Romeo  loved  Juliet.  It  was  given  him  to  labor 
in  the  most  important,  and  therefore  the  most  stimulating,  newspaper  field 
in  the  United  States.  He  flourished  at  a  time  when  there  was  special  need 
of  him— a  time  when  the  supply  of  food  for  the  mind  and  soul  furnished 
by  the  newspapers  of  the  country  was  sadly  unequal  to  the  demand.  Just 
as  John  was  called  to  go  crying  in  the  wilderness,  "bearing  witness  to  the 
Light,"  Horace  Greeley  would  seem  to  have  been  called  to  serve  as  guide, 
philosopher,  friend  to  thousands  of  his  countrymen  all  over  the  land.  His 
equipment  for  such  a  task  included,  among  its  essentials,  the  pen  of  a  fluent, 
forcible  writer.  It  was  wickedly  said  of  a  certain  rhapsodical  poet  that 
He  had  nothing  to  say  but  he  said  it  splendidly.  Mr.  Greeley  had  much 
to  say  that  was  well  worth  listening  to  on  a  variety  of  topics  of  general 
interest,  and  he  knew  how  to  say  it.  He  was  a  master  of  what  has  been 
called  the  art  of  putting  things.  His  literary  style  was  as  frank  and  unaf- 
fected as  his  own  nature.  Sometimes,  in  the  heat  of  a  political  canvass  or 
in  reply  to  a  wanton  attack  or  in  the  stress  of  one  of  his  numberless  con- 
troversies, his  output  of  heated  superlatives  was  very  large.  Charging  his 
ink  with  vitriol  he  indulged  in  imprecatory  adjectives  and  substantives, 
losing  sight  of  the  sound  old  caution, 

"Strong  without  rage,  without  overflowing  full." 

His  brother  journalists  of  the  press  of  the  metropolis,  William  Cullen 
Bryant,  Charles  A.  Dana  and  Henry  J.  Raymond,  all  college-bred  men, 
excelled  him  as  a  writer,  in  certain  particulars.  Bryant,  the  poet-editor, 
was  more  profound  and  polished.  Dana  was  his  superior  in  versatility  and 
scholarship,  Raymond  was  more  brilliant,  more  philosophic.  But  none  of 
them  surpassed  him  in  mental  robustness,  none  in  pungent  unambiguous 
expression.  When  he  undertook  to  call  a  spade  a  spade,  he  did  so  with 
precision — in  terms  which  rendered  it  impossible  for  the  reader  to  suppose 
that  he  was  referring  to  a  shovel. 

It  is  to  be  added,  in  enumerating  the  sources  of  Mr.  Greeley 's  strength 
as  a  journalist,  that  after  the  Tribune  became  well  established  he  made  a 
large  number  of  lecture  tours.  He  addressed  lyceums,  agricultural  societies, 
mechanics'  institutes,  chambers  of  commerce  and  other  bodies  in  various 
parts  of  the  land,  and  in  addition  did  his  share  of  stump-speaking  here  and 
there.  He  was  thus  brought  into  personal  contact  with  the  people,  and 
gained,  at  first  hand,  an  insight  into  their  needs  and  aspirations  which  added 

18 


sensibly  to  his  practical  efficiency.  He  was  proficient  in  few  of  the  arts 
of  oratory  and  still  was  a  popular  speaker— your  mere  elocutionist,  how- 
ever accomplished,  is  not  listened  to  as  attentively  as  the  man  behind  the 
gun,  although  the  man  distinctly  falls  "below  Demosthenes  or  Cicero." 
When  Mr.  Greely  rose  to  speak,  his  hearers  said  to  one  another,  "We  will 
now  hear  from  the  man  behind  the  Tribune."  I  have  said  that,  although 
not  an  orator  (in  the  academic  sense  of  the  term),  he  was,  nevertheless,  a 
popular  speaker. 

Andrew  I).  White,  the  distinguished  ex-president  of  Cornell  University, 
said  of  one  of  Mr.  Greeley's  speeches  which  he  was  privileged  to  hear  (and 
Mr.  White  was  a  good  judge  of  such  matters)  :  "I  never  heard  a  more 
simple,  strong,  lucid  use  of  the  English  language."  That  was  Horace 
Greeley,  with  tongue  or  with  pen — simple,  strong  and  lucid. 

I  have  thus  glanced — there  is  only  time  for  a  glance — at  funda- 
mental things  which  went  to  the  making  of  Greeley  the  journalist  and  ren- 
dered him  an  influence  whose  extent  and  force  it  would  be  difficult  to  over- 
estimate. From  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific  he  came  to  be  looked  up  to  as 
the  chief  educator  of  his  profession,  the  leading  moulder  of  public  opinion, 
an  inspiration  to  wholesome,  progressive,  broad-gauge  living.  More  than 
that,  the  masses,  as  they  became  acquainted  with  his  personality,  grew  fond 
of  him ;  for  they  felt,  and  felt  truly,  that 

"His  heart  was  made  of  simple,  manly  stuff, 
As  home-spun  as  their  own." 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  these  parishioners  of  his  did  not  invariably  say 
amen,  to  his  utterances.  Now  and  then  they  distinctly  disagreed  with  him. 
Now  and  then  they  made  light  of  some  scheme  of  his  for  accelerating  the 
approach  of  the  millennium.  Now  and  then  they  resented  his  attitude 
touching  party  principles  or  policies  or  leaders.  Now  and  then  they  called 
him  a  visionary.  Not  a  few  of  them  repudiated  his  war  policy  and  greeted 
his  signing  of  Jefferson  Davis'  bail  bond  with  "curses  red  with  uncommon 
wrath. "  But  one  thing  they  did  not  do — they  never  really  doubted  him, 
never  withdrew  their  confidence  from  him.  Their  faith  in  the  man  was 
founded  on  a  rock.  So  it  is  that  what  Lowell  said  of  another  illustrious 
American  is  emphatically  true  of  Horace  Greeley — he  was  a  "standing 
testimonial  to  the  cumulative  power  of  character." 

Mr.  Greeley  edited  three  newspapers  before  starting  the  Tribune  — pre- 
liminary flights  to  test  the  machine.  The  Xcw  Yorker  was  his  first  venture 
—a  weekly,  so  the  prospectus  ran— devoted  to  "current  literature,  politics 
and  general  news."  It  began  in  March,  18M4,  and  was  discontinued  in  Sep- 
tember, 1841.  Its  demise  was  due  largely  to  the  distressing  circumstance 
that  very  many  of  its  subscribers  never  paid  their  bills.  In  his  "Recollec- 
tions of  a  Busy  Life, ' '  Mr.  Greeley  states  that  when  the  paper  stopped  these 
delinquents,  who  became  permanent  in  their  delinquency,  owed  him  ten 
thousand  dollars.  (It  would  appear  from  this  that  there  were  some  bad 
people  in  New  York  even  in  "the  good  old  days.")  Mr.  Greeley's  next 

10 


newspaper  was  the  Jcffcrsonian,  a  weekly  campaign  sheet  in  the  interest  of 
the  Whig  party.  Price  fifty  cents  a  year.  It  was  published  in  1838-39  and 
was  succeeded  in  1840  by  another  and  much  more  important  campaign 
paper,  the  Log  Cabin.  That  was  the  year  when  "William  Henry  Harrison 
was  elected  President  of  the  United  States,  and  it  is  scarcely  too  much  to 
assert  that  the  Log  Cabin  did  as  much  to  elect  him  as  any  other  agency  em- 
ployed in  the  canvass.  It  was,  in  fact,  an  ideal  campaign  paper,  made  up 
of  short,  telling  editorials,  trenchant  and  witty  paragraphs;  wood-cuts, 
crude  but  entertaining  and  effective,  and  "Tippecanoe"  songs,  words  and 
music,  so  "catchy"  and  so  expressive  of  the  popular  feeling  that  the  country 
became  vociferously  vocal  during  that  Harrison  campaign.  With  the  Log 
Cabin  Mr.  Greeley  completed  his  newspaper  novitiate ;  for  on  the  tenth  of 
April,  1841,  he  issued  the  first  number  of  the  journal  which  was  to  win  him 
imperishable  fame — the  New  York  Tribune. 

Now.  all  these  papers,  differing  from  one  another  in  some  respects,  had 
one  noteworthy  characteristic  in  common.  They  were  clean  papers,  whole- 
some papers,  papers  which  did  not  pander,  papers  which  declined  to  make 
friends  with  the  mammon  of  unrighteousness.  In  his  "Recollections,"  Mr. 
Greeley  directs,  attention  to  the  fact  that  the  Jeffcrsonian  "carefully 
eschewed  abuse,  scurrility  and  railing  accusation."  The  Log  Cabin,  which 
he  states,  was  "more  lively  and  less  sedately  argumentative"  than  its  prede- 
cessor, was  like  it  in  avoiding  abuse,  scurrility  and  railing  accusation. 
That  it  was  determined  not  to  strike  any  foul  blows  is  attested  by  a  letter 
which  Mr.  Greeley  wrote  to  one  of  his  correspondents.  In  this  letter  the 
correspondent  is  informed  that  "Articles  assailing  the  personal  character  of 
Mr.  Van  Buren  [who  was  General  Harrison's  competitor  for  the  Presi- 
dency] or  of  his  supporters  cannot  be  printed  in  the  Cabin."  As  for  the 
Tribune,  it  made  clear  in  its  prospectus  that  it  was  bent  upon  conforming  its 
conduct  to  a  high  moral  standard.  This  is  the  essential  part  of  the  pros- 
pectus, "The  Tribune,  as  its  name  imports,  will  labour  to  advance  the  in- 
terests of  the  people  and  to  promote  their  moral,  social  and  political  well- 
being.  The  immoral  and  degrading  police  reports,  advertisements  and  other 
matter,  which  have  been  allowed  to  disgrace  the  columns  of  our  leading 
penny  papers,  will  be  carefully  excluded  from  this,  and  no  exertion  spared 
to  render  it  worthy  of  the  hearty  approval  of  the  virtuous  and  refined  and 
a  welcome  visitor  at  the  fireside. ' ' 

Words  are  always  cheap,  but  Mr.  Greeley  conducted  the  Tribune  in 
accordance  with  what  he  thus  promised.  He  made  it  the  conservator  of 
whatever  things  are  pure,  lovely  and  of  good  report.  He  made  it  hospitable 
to  science,  to  literature  and  the  other  arts,  fine  or  useful.  Its  columns  were 
open  to  the  discussion  of  any  cause— including  some  vagaries— which  was 
decent.  It  was  a  powerful  and  persistent  champion  of  the  rights  of  labor. 
Such  was  its  devotion  to  freedom  and  such  its  efficiency  in  battling  against 
her  enemies,  that  Harper's  Weekly,  in  its  leader  on  the  death  of  Mr.  Greeley, 
did  not  hesitate  to  declare  that  "Xo  single  force  in  educating  the  nation  for 

20 


the  terrible  struggle  with  slavery  was  so  powerful  as  the  Tribune."  Horace 
Greeley,  as  thus  revealed,  was  a  good  and  faithful  servant  of  the  people,  a 
stalwart  promoter  of  the  civilization  which  really  civilizes. 

A  certain  publication  was  once  characterized  as  a  newspaper  "for  which 
there  is  always  a  market  but  never  an  enthusiasm. "  Mr.  Greeley,  while 
riot  lacking  a  decent  respect  for  the  almighty  dollar,  aimed  primarily  to 
furnish  his  readers  with  a  paper  which  would  command  their  enthusiasm. 
"To  do  good,"  he  said  in  one  of  his  occasional  addresses,  "is  the  proper 
business  of  life ;  to  qualify  for  earnestness  and  efficiency  in  doing  good,  is 
the  true  end  of  Education ;  the  sum  of  all  the  knowledge  in  the  child  is  the 
consciousness  that  he  lives  not  for  himself,  but  for  his  Creator  and  his  race." 
Mr.  Greeley 's  course  as  a  journalist  was  in  harmony  with  that  exalted  con- 
ception of  the  purpose  of  human  life.  He  did,  indeed,  labor  strenuously 
to  make  his  paper  marketable — an  eight-hour  law  for  others  but  a  sixteen- 
hour  law  for  Greeley,  would  seem  to  have  been  his  way  of  disposing  of  one 
phase  of  the  labor  question— but  it  was  not  in  the  man  to  strive  for  material 
success  at  the  expense  of  principle.  It  followed,  of  course,  that  the  assump- 
tion that  a  newspaper  is  a  "business  enterprise,"  never  impressed  him. 
His  career  justified  the  inference  that  in  his  view  a  newspaper  is  not  a 
business  enterprise  in  any  sense  which  puts  it  in  a  different  class,  so  far  as 
moral  obligation  is  concerned,  from  that  in  which  the  business  enterprise 
of  preaching  the  Gospel  belongs.  In  other  words,  it  was  Mr.  Greeley 's  con- 
viction that  the  editor  of  a  newspaper  in  his  sanctum  in  the  discharge  of 
the  duties  of  his  vocation,  is  just  as  amenable  to  the  Ten  Commandments, 
the  Golden  Rule,  the  precepts  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  as  the  minister 
in  his  pulpit  in  the  discharge  of  the  duties  of  his  vocation.  It  behooves  the 
minister  to  preach  the  truth  as  he  sees  it,  whether  men  will  hear  or  whether 
they  will  forbear.  It  no  less  behooves  the  editor — so  Mr.  Greeley  held,  and 
ho  "put  his  creed  into  his  deed"— to  print  only  what  he  himself  regards  as 
reputable,  whether  men  take  or  refuse  to  take  his  paper. 

Mr.  Greeley  had  a  decided  opinion  on  the  much-mooted  question  as  to 
what  a  newspaper  ought  and  ought  not  to  print.  One  of  the  current  New 
York  dailies  takes  for  its  motto,  "All  the  News  that's  Fit  to  Print";  the 
motto  of  another  is  "All  the  News  that  Is  News."  Charles  A.  Dana,  in  an 
address  before  a  newspaper  association,  defined  news  to  be  "anything  which 
interests  the  people."  He  went  on  to  say  that  "Whatever  Divine  Prov- 
idence permits  to  occur  I  am  not  too  proud  to  print."  Mr.  Greeley,  on  the 
other  hand,  in  a  letter  written  to  Mr.  Dana  while  that  gentleman  was  a 
member  of  the  Tribune  staff,  exclaimed,  "Oh,  my  friend,  the  wisdom  which 
teaches  us  what  should  not  be  said,  that  is  the  hardest  to  be  acquired  of 
all!"  Mr.  Greeley  did  not  believe  in  reporting  "whatever  Divine  Provi- 
dence permitted  to  occur."  He  drew  the  line  somewhere.  Divine  Provi- 
dence permitted  Sodom  and  Gomorra  to  occur.  But,  judging  from  the  con- 
victions which  Mr.  Greeley  expressed  on  the  subject  of  newspaper  publicity, 
he  would  have  held  that  an  unvarnished  report  of  the  doings  at  Sodom  and 


Gomorra,  when  the  lid  was  off,  would  have  been  eligible  only  for  the  waste- 
basket. 

Mr.  Greeley  was  profoundly  in  earnest.  There  was  nothing  perfunctory, 
nothing  lukewarm  in  his  journalistic  work.  His  utterances  had  their  root  in 
strong  convictions.  Henry  J.  Raymond  was  credited  with  saying  to  a  friend 
that  he  himself  never  finished  a  sentence  without  a  profound  feeling  that  io 
was  only  partially  true.  Mr.  Greeley  was  too  thorough-going,  too  decided 
in  his  opinions,  to  have  experienced  such  a  feeling.  It  is  related  of  Charles 
Simmer  that  once  in  the  United  States  Senate,  while  he  was  indulging  in 
a  peculiarly  fierce  philippic  against  slavery,  a  fellow  Senator  ventured  to 
ask  him  to  consider  the  other  side.  "Sir,"  thundered  Simmer,  "there  isn't 
any  other  side."  When  Greeley  sat  down  to  express  his  views  on  Slavery, 
Protection,  Whigism,  Republicanism,  Henry  Clay,  or  on  any  of  his  other 
favorite  themes,  there  wasn't  any  other  side,  so  far  as  he  was  concerned.  He 
wrote  with  the  serene  confidence  of  one  who  is  enunciating  axioms,  and, 
jilthough  his  utterances  did  not  invariably  harmonize  with  one  another — 
the  utterances  of  progressive  men  seldom  do— there  was  an  air  of  something 
very  like  infallibility  about  them.  It  was  not  unnatural,  therefore,  that  the 
Tribune  came  to  be  regarded  by  many  of  its  readers  as  of  only  less  author- 
ity than  the  Bible  itself.  Mr.  Depew,  at  the  fiftieth  anniversary  of  the 
founding  of  the  Tribune,  brought  out  this  circumstance  in  his  own  charac- 
teristically racy  way.  We  quote  from  his  address:  "  'Why  do  you  look  so 
gloomy?'  said  a  traveler  riding  along  the  highway  in  the  Western  Reserve, 
in  the  old  anti-slavery  days,  to  a  farmer  who  was  sitting  moodily  on  a  fence. 
'Because,'  said  the  farmer,  'my  Democratic  friend  next  door  got  the  best  of 
me  in  an  argument  last  night.  But  when  I  get  my  semi-weekly  Tribune  to- 
morrow I'll  knock  the  foundations  all  out  from  under  him.'  When  I  was 
a  lad  in  the  country,"  Mr.  Depew  continued,  "I  have  frequently  observed  a 
man  drive  in  ten  miles  to  the  village  post-office  for  his  weekly  Tribune,  and 
the  same  person,  when  term  closed,  came  up  to  the  academy  for  his  boy.  I 
could  see  no  difference  in  the  affectionate  tenderness  and  eager  pleasure 
with  which  he  grasped  his  paper  or  embraced  his  son." 

What  a  political  journalist  Horace  Greeley  was!  In  a  popular  govern- 
ment such  as  ours,  a  government  through  parties,  politics  is  virtually  a  con- 
tinuous performance.  While  he  was  as  yet  but  a  little  more  than  a  baby  he 
became  immersed  in  politics  and  he  remained  immersed  in  them  as  long  as 
he  lived.  He  may  not,  indeed,  have  compiled  election  returns  in  his  cradle, 
but  he  informs  us  that  he  was  "an  ardent  politician  when  not  yet  half  old 
enough  to  vote."  In  his  "Recollections"  he  recollects  more  politics  than 
anything  else.  He  came  to  know  the  political  complexion  of  the  entire 
country  about  as  thoroughly  as  a  ward  leader  knows  the  politics  of  his  ward. 
One  of  the  stories  illustrative  of  his  genius  for  remembering  election  figures 
relates  that  a  messenger  came  into  the  Tribune  office  the  night  of  a  Presi- 
dential election  with  telegrams,  one  of  which  read  that  a  certain  small  town 
in  Southern  Ohio  had  given  the  Republican  ticket  a  majority  of  two  hun- 


dred.  Mr.  Greeley  listened  while  the  telegram  was  being  read  and  then 
observed,  "that  town  gave  us  two  hundred  and  twenty  majority  the  last 
time."  He  was  an  indefatigable  and  enthusiastic  party  man,  striving  with 
all  his  might  for  Whig  or  Republican  success.  Nevertheless,  he  refused  to 
allow  politics  to  interfere  with  the  exercise  of  his  private  judgment.  To 
employ  a  political  phrase,  politics  never  got  the  delegates  away  from  his 
independence.  He  permanently  retained  the  captaincy  of  his  own  soul. 
"I  accept  unreservedly,"  he  once  wrote,  "the  views  of  no  man,  dead  or 
living.  '  The  master  has  said  it,'  was  never  conclusive  with  me.  Even  though 
T  have  found  him  right  nine  times  I  do  not  take  his  tenth  proposition  on 
trust :  unless  that  also  be  proved  sound  I  reject  it."  In  accordance  with  this 
unreserved  declaration  of  independence  was  the  fair  warning  which  he  ad- 
dressed to  whom  ii  might  concern,  in  starting  the  Tribune,  that  the  paper 
was  not  going  to  be  a  subservient  party  organ.  "Earnestly  believing," 
he  frankly  said,  "that  the  political  revolution  which  has  called  William 
Henry  Harrison  to  the  Chief  Magistracy  of  the  Nation  was  a  triumph  of 
Right,  Reason  and  Public  Good  over  Error  and  Sinister  Ambition,  the 
Tribune  will  give  to  the  new  Administration  a  frank  and  cordial  but  manly 
and  independent  support,  judging  it  always  by  its  acts  and  commending 
those  only  so  far  as  they  shall  seem  calculated  to  subserve  the  great  end  of 
all  government— the  welfare  of  the  People. ' '  To  the  same  effect,  but  more 
emphatic,  is  the  account  which  he  gives  in  his  "Recollections"  of  the  place 
in  New  York  journalism  which  he  intended  that  the  Tribune  should  make 
for  itself.  "My  leading  idea  was,"  he  explains,  "the  establishment  of  a 
journal  removed  alike  from  servile  partisanship,  on  the  one  hand,  and  from 
gagged,  mincing  neutrality  on  the  other.  *  *  *  I  believed  there  was 
a  happy  medium  between  these  extremes — a  position  from  which  a  journalist 
might  openly  and  heartily  advocate  the  principles  and  commend  the  meas- 
ures of  that  party  to  which  his  convictions  allied  him,  yet  frankly  dissent 
from  its  course  on  a  particular  question,  and  even  denounce  its  candidates 
if  they  were  shown  to  be  deficient  in  capacity  or  (far  worse)  in  integrity." 
Roscoe  Conkling  once  affirmed  that  he  did  not  know  how  to  belong  to  a 
party  a  little.  Mr.  Greeley  fought  a  good  fight  for  the  Whig  party  and  for 
the  Republican  party.  Neither  of  these  organizations  had  in  its  service  a 
stouter  champion  than  he.  But,  although  he  did  not  belong  to  them  a 
"little,"  but  a  great  deal,  he  did  not  belong  to  either  so  much  as  to  hesitate 
to  criticize  party  measures  or  party  representatives  whenever  the  conclusion 
was  forced  upon  him  that  they  deserved  criticism.  "To  thine  own  self  be 
true"  was  an  admonition  to  whch  he  ever  rendered  implicit  obedience. 

I  have  thus  touched  upon  the  leading  sources  of  Mr.  Greeley 's  conspic- 
uous success  as  a  journalist.  It  was  a  logical  success — the  natural  result  of 
a  wise  use  of  great  gifts  and  great  opportunities.  WTendell  Phillips,  while 
sharply  assailing  the  newspaper  press,  paid  it  what  was  really  a  superb  com- 
pliment. He  gave  it  as  his  opinion  that  America  owed  to  the  newspapers 
one-half,  if  not  more,  of  her  development.  It  is  not  too  much  to  assert  that 

23 


Horace  Greeley  contributed  in  a  greater  degree  than  any  other  journalist 
of  his  day  to  that  development,  by  his  incessant  activity  in  behalf  of  the 
forces  which  make  for  progress  of  the  best  sort. 

I  am  tempted,  before  concluding,  to  tell  two  stories  about  Mr.  Greeley 
of  which  I  am  especially  fond.  One  of  them  was  a  favorite  of  George 
William  Curtis,  and  this  is  his  version  of  it: 

"When  Horace  Greeley  was  in  Paris  he  was  one  morning  looking  with 
an  American  friend  at  the  pictures  of  the  Louvre  and  talking  of  this 
country.  "The  fact  is,"  said  Mr.  Greeley,  "that  wrhat  we  need  is  a  darned 
good  licking."  An  Englishman  who  stood  by  and  heard  the  conversation 
smiled  eagerly  as  if  he  knew  a  nation  that  would  like  to  administer  the  cas- 
tigation.  "Yes,  sir,"  said  he  complacently,  rubbing  his  hands  with  appetite 
and  joining  in  the  conversation, ' '  that  is  just  what  you  do  want. "  "  But  the 
difficulty  is,"  continued  Mr.  Greeley  to  his  friend,  as  if  he  had  heard  noth- 
ing, "the  difficulty  is  that  there  is  no  nation  in  the  world  that  can  lick  us." 

The  other  story  was  told  me  by  the  late  Clinton  B.  Fisk— for  whom  pos- 
sibly some  of  you  failed  to  vote  when  he  was  the  Prohibition  candidate  for 
the  Presidency  in  1888.  I  met  Mr.  Fisk  at  a  Rutgers  College  dinner,  and  in 
the  course  of  conversation  Mr.  Greeley  was  mentioned.  "I  knew  Mr.  Greeley 
very  well,"  said  Mr.  Fisk,  "and  had  many  a  long  talk  with  him.  After 
the  civil  war  we  were  accustomed  when  we  met  to  discuss  it  from  many 
points  of  view.  I  recall  an  occasion  when  Mr.  Greeley  concluded  all  he  had 
to  say  in  regard  to  a  certain  point  by  remarking,  '  Clinton,  the  more  I  think 
of  it  the  more  firmly  convinced  I  become  that  just  as  soon  as  the  war  was 
over  we  ought  to  have  freely  and  fully  forgiven  all  our  Southern  brethren— 
the  devil  take  them ! '  '  The  story  illustrated  what  his  war  policy  always 
revealed,  his  loving  kindness  toward  the  South,  and  emphasized  in  a  droll 
way,  that  in  spite  of  that  loving  kindness,  he  had  become  very  tired  of  the 
Southern  question. 

Members  of  Typographical  Union  Number  Six,  you  may  well  be  proud 
that  this  illustrious  American  who  began  the  battle  of  life  as  a  typesetter, 
a  veritable  printer's  devil,  was  one  of  the  founders  and  the  first  president 
of  your  organization.  You  do  well  to  celebrate  the  centennial  of  his  birth, 
for  to  ponder  upon  what  Horace  Greeley  was  and  did  is  an  exercise  at  once 
pleasant  and  profitable.  It  is  a  potent  incentive  to  worthy  living.  It 
refreshes  our  faith  in  human  nature.  It  is  full  of  encouragement  to  the 
youth  of  our  land  who  find  themselves,  as  he  found  himself  when  a  lad,  poor 
and  friendless,  at  the  foot  of  the  ladder  of  fortune.  Mr.  Greeley  has  taken 
his  place  in  history  as  one  of  the  leaders  of  the  journalism  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  He  had  his  eccentricities,  his  weaknesses,  his  limitations.  No  man 
of  his  day  had  more  fun  poked  at  him  or  was  a  more  frequent  target  for 
caricature.  But  he  could  have  disposed  of  his  critics  by  saying  to  them 
what  Cromwell  said  to  the  artist  to  whom  he  was  sitting  for  his  portrait, 
"Paint  me  as  I  am,  warts  and  all."  Cromwell  could  afford  to  be  thus 
painted  because  he  was  Cromwell.  Today  Horace  Greeley  looms  large,  and 

24 


his  shortcomings  seem  but  the  small  dust  of  the  balance  because  they 
were  the  shortcomings  of  such  a  man.  One  of  his  biographers  asserts  that 
Mr.  Greeley  never  was  a  ' '  man  of  the  world. ' '  No,  he  was  not ;  but  a  man 
does  not  have  to  be  that  sort  of  a  man  to  be  a  man  of  the  best  kind.  Indeed, 
there  is  the  highest  authority  for  holding  that  to  "become  as  a  little  child" 
is  to  attain  to  what  is  best  in  manhood.  Mr.  Greeley  possessed  in  its  fulness 
the  childlike  spirit.  lie  had  a  child's  enthusiasm,  a  child's  tenderness  of 
heart,  a  child's  confiding  disposition,  a  child's  unsophisticated  simplicity. 
His  life  was  a  strenuous  one,  full  of  vicissitudes.  Neglect,  appreciation,  joy, 
sorrow,  failure,  success,  obscurity,  fame — he  experienced  all  of  them  but 
was  overcome  by  none.  He  knew  how  to  be  abased  and  how  to  abound  and 
in  all  times  of  his  prosperity  and  in  all  times  of  his  adversity  he  kept  faith 
with  the  ideals  which  dominated  his  soul  when,  before  he  had  attained  to 
man 's  estate,  he  came  to  New  York  to  seek  his  fortune.  It  is  as  a  journalist 
that  I  have  been  considering  him,  but  because  what  the  catechism  calls  "the 
chief  end  of  man"  is  not  achievement  but  character,  I  prefer,  in  closing  my 
address,  to  contemplate  Mr.  Greeley  apart  from  his  vocation  as  a  member  of 
that  Brotherhood  of  Man  whose  welfare  he  did  so  much  to  promote.  When 
Walter  Scott  realized  that  for  him  the  "inevitable  hour"  was  about  to  strike 
he  gave  his  son-in-law,  Lockhart,  to  whom  he  was  devotedly  attached,  a  fare- 
well greeting,  and  although  Sir  Walter  was  one  of  the  leading  literary  lights 
of  his  age,  literature  had  no  place  in  that  valedictory.  He  simply  said  to 
Lockhart,  so  one  of  his  biographers  tells  us,  "Be  a  good  man,  my  dear."  If 
Horace  Greeley,  in  response  to  the  numberless  expressions  of  love  and  ad- 
miration which  his  one  hundredth  birthday  has  inspired  could  send  a  mes- 
sage to  you  and  the  rest  who  celebrate  him,  we  may  be  sure  that  he  would 
say  something  which  would  make  for  the  betterment  of  all  classes  and  con- 
ditions of  humanity.  There  was  much  in  his  sterling  manhood  which  sug- 
gested Abraham  Lincoln.  They  had  their  differences  in  war  times,  but  were 
ever  closely  allied  by  the  fervent,  unselfish  patriotism  which  they  possessed 
in  common.  So  there  is  full  warrant  for  believing  that  the  centennial  mes- 
sage of  Horace  Greeley  would  harmonize  with,  and  perchance  re-echo,  the 
solemn  admonition  which  Abraham  Lincoln  addressed  to  his  countrymen 
from  the  hallowed  ground  of  Gettysburg,  "See  to  it  that  government  of  the 
people,  by  the  people  and  for  the  people  shall  not  perish  from  the  earth." 


25 


461464 


Few  of  the  Letters  Received 


JANUARY  23,  1911. 
GREELEY  CENTENNIAL  COMMITTEE: 

Gentlemen:— A  desire  to  add  a  meed  of  praise  and  admiration  to  that 
of  the  host  of  others  has  induced  me  to  note  a  few  incidents  in  the  life  of 
Horace  Greeley,  that  grand  old  man  whom  I  saw  quite  early  in  his  profes- 
sional career  when  he  was  exerting  all  his  intellectual  and  physical  powers 
to  achieve  success  in  establishing  The  New  Yorker  in  1838,  when  the  office 
was  located  in  the  rear  building  of  No.  29  Ann  Street.  There  were  three 
hands  besides  myself— Mr.  Bowe,  the  foreman,  Mr.  Winchester,  and  Mr. 
Swain,  who  set  up  the  piece  of  music  that  always  graced  the  last  page  of 
that  popular  newspaper.  Mr.  Greeley  would  often  "lend  a  hand"  when  the 
paper  was  behind,  by  setting  up  a  few  sticksful.  His  bent  attitude  while 
standing  at  the  case,  and  bobbing  motion  while  setting  type,  are  vividly 
impressed  on  my  memory.  If  he  "pied"  a  line,  his  proverbial  equanimity 
was  not  disturbed  thereby.  Apropos  of  pie,  it  was  his  custom  every  Satur- 
day at  noon — the  paper  having  been  printed  and  mailed — to  provide  what 
was  designated  as  a  "pie  gorge,"  to  \vhich  we  were  freely  invited.  About 
a  dozen  good  sized  pies,  fresh  from  the  famous  pie  bakery  of  Russel,  in 
Spruce  Street,  would  grace  the  imposing-stone.  Ample  justice  was  done 
to  the  delicious  pastries,  especially  by  the  great  editor  himself  who,  released 
from  the  week's  toil  and  anxiety,  gave  full  rein  to  his  natural  flow  of  humor, 
and  indulged  in  witticisms  and  anecdotes  that  were  a  feast  for  the  soul, 
besides  being  a  digestive  assistant.  A  feature  of  the  entertainment  to  me 
—a  Knickerbocker— was  the  Yankee  accent,  with  the  nasal  intonation,  that 
marked  the  utterances  of  most  of  the  hands,  who  hailed  from  "  Varmount," 
including  Mr.  Greeley  himself,  who  was  long  a  resident  there. 

Notwithstanding  the  financial  difficulties  that  beset  him  while  publishing 
The  Xew  Yorker,  he  never  failed  to  pay  his  hands  promptly  every  cent  they 
had  earned.  He  seemed  to  regard  that  obligation  as  a  sacred  one;  and  so, 
too,  with  regard  to  the  same  obligations  to  the  Tribune  printers.  He  was 
truly  the  workingman's  best  friend  in  all  that  the  term  implies,  as  his 
newspaper  fully  evidenced.  I  am  proud  of  holding  a  Union  Card  of  July 
6,  1850,  with  his  signature  as  its  first  president. 

CHARLES  VOGT, 

Card  No.  54  in  1850. 


HAMILTON,  BERMUDA,  Jan.  17.  1911. 
DEAR  MR.  McCABE: 

I  should  be  glad  and  proud  to  come  to  No.  6's  celebration  of  the  Greeley 
centenary.  But  I  am  almost  a  hundred  years  old  myself,  by  my  personal 
almanac,  which  has  been  sent  forward  by  two  attacks  of  the  grippe,  and  I 
can  only  join  you  in  the  cordial  sense  of  unity  which  never  ceases  to  bind 
printers  together.  Greeley  was  one  of  the  best  of  us,  and  we  ought  to  keep 
his  memory  green. 

Yours  sincerely, 

W.  D.  HOWELLS. 


EDITORIAL  ROOMS 

HARPER    £&    BROTHERS 

Franklin  Square 

NEW  YORK,  January  26,  1911. 
DEAR  MR.  McCABE: 

As  I  live  in  the  country  and  am  much  enfeebled  by  recent  illness,  I  am 
unable  to  accept  the  kind  invitation  of  your  committee  to  the  meeting  com- 
memorating the  centenary  of  Horace  Greeley 's  birth. 

Along  with  Lincoln  and  old  Ben  Franklin,  Horace  Greeley  ranks  as  a 
singular  type,  eminently  original  and  individual,  of  the  plain  American; 
and  it  is  peculiarly  fitting  that  this  centenary  of  his  birth  should  be  cele- 
brated under  the  auspices  of  Typographical  Union  No.  6,  of  which  he  was 
the  first  president. 

With  hearty  sympathy  with  your  undertaking, 

Yours  faithfully, 

H.  M.  ALDEN*. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

Los  Angeles 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


Form  L9-50m-9,'60  (8361084)444 


GREELEY  COMMITTEE 


JOHN  F.  McCABE,  Chairman 

JOHN  F.  LANE  JOHN  F.  CROSSLAND 

WILLIAM  F.  WETZEL  JAMES  H.  DAHM,  Secretary 


L1BKAKI 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
LOS  ANGELES 


Jlne  hundredth 
G805  anniversary  of 

the  birth  of 
Horace  Greeley. 

APR  1  9 


z 

232 

G805 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILIT 


A    000  788  552 


